The Observer (Kampala)
2 July 2008
editorial
In a health centre 28km from Soroti town, at least 30 mothers, fathers, grandmothers, uncles, aunties sit in a queue to see the 'doctor'.
The main complaint is malaria. One by one, they see the clinical officer, who examines them or their children, writes illegible things in their exercise books, and sends them off to buy the medicine from wherever they wish. This health centre, which serves tens of thousands of people, has not had drugs for more than a month. It does not even have painkillers like aspirin.
That is our healthcare. Thousands of other health centres are like that one in Soroti.
Our healthcare is sick to the core. The poor cannot even access treatment for ailments as simple as cough, stomach upsets, leave alone minor surgeries.
Referral hospitals are not only dilapidated but also poorly run by overworked and underpaid health workers and managers. Some expectant mothers die in corridors of hospitals, get still births or lose their babies due to lack of attention.
Predictably, skilled health workers, who have been educated at high cost to themselves or the state, are taking their labour to places where it will be treated with more respect -other countries or private clinics.
And yet we are told that our economy is doing very well! In fact, our president is about to get super-jet befitting the head of an upcoming African tiger! We are even capable of maintaining a Parliament of 333 members, a Cabinet of 70 ministers, hundreds of presidential advisors, RDCs, districts, etc.
The government needs to recognise that the economy cannot grow to its full potential if health is not prioritized. How can a sick people produce? Instead, they breed famine and civil strive! If the government cannot offer drugs in hospitals to be accessed by the poor, and remunerate doctors modestly, what can it possibly offer?
The cynics have come to believe that life and good health care belong to the wealthy and VIPs, who can be flown out of the country for medical treatment at taxpayers' expense.
If government has managed to maintain such a gigantic public administration apparatus, and reserve some more to buy off political opponents, it can surely find money to run a national health service.
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The statement below is the catch word "Referral hospitals are not only dilapidated but also poorly run by overworked and underpaid health workers and managers. Some expectant mothers die in corridors of hospitals, get still births or lose their babies due to lack of attention." I am personally a Healthworker, but when you look at may payslip you wonder whether it is me who is expected to work five days a week. Earning 594,114.00 Uganda shillings a month. Using fuel 10 litres in my car at 25,000/day makes it 500,000/= at the end of the month.This will leave 94,114/= Uganda shillings as balance. Before I even look at the rest of the car requirements, I have not washed my shirt or even drank a bottle of minerall water. By the way I have a wife and children who eat, go to school and I am vulnerabble to a host of other problems like other people. How do you expect me to input under such circumstances. At one time I was advised to get away from using my car and opt for a commuter or bodaboda, doest it make any sense for me to continue working on such a job? Definately no. That is why they quit for better opportunities.
One is forced to ask himself the question "What a country has Uganda turned to be or what are our politicians up to?" Those guys armed to the teeth with fire spitting instruments and were running about, threatening civilians who in their capacity as citizens wanted their politicians to adress the real issues during the last presidential election campaigns must now feel gratified once they see such humiliating articles. Where is that pride Uganda doctors once enjoyed as being the best practitioners in the entire sub continent? What is importance of creating Referral hospitals that lack even sringes, cotton to be simplicist? What is the importance of travelling in the most recent aircraft when your citizens who pay taxes through their nostrils go unattended to? For whom will hospitals be built after they are all death due to malaria, typhoid, unattended to labour.... It is self defeating to criticise Mugabe when the real Mugabes have remained to syphon Uganda tax payers money for meeting their prolonged apetites for luxuries. Either Ugandans wake up to face the real problems or continue accepting people who would do everything to remain in power in the names of their families and cohorts.
Museveni-ism is synonymous with Mugabe-ism; they are a perverse distortion of Africas cause and course of history. And unfortunately it is now apparent that it is going to take more than "People Power" to remove these African modern day barbaric tyrants hell bent on clinging to power even when the results on the grounds provide not a single shred of evidence to support their illegimate rule. Contrary to political rhetoric and bogus statistics routinely spewed from Kampala everybody knows the lives of Ugandans overall are worse than they have ever been in the history of the country. This is a fact; the rest is hand waving nonsensical mambo jambo.
I completely agree with this article. The availability of basic health services is a basic foundation for an operational country.
The GDP measurement of growth in Uganda must not be measured by the standard of well being of its' citizens. Some investors or well placed people with contracts may be doing well, but if a hospital does not have basic drug supplies, or people who go to a "health center" can not get the drugs that are described herein, even aspirin,..then what good is a health center?
Why would expectant mothers even attempt to go to a hospital to deliver, if there are little or no services there, lack of painkillers, etc?